Since an AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) patient was first found in 1982, in Los Angeles, USA, the number of patients has increased worldwide. In Korea, AIDS patients have steadily increased from the discovery of an American AIDS patient in 1985, requiring the development of new therapeutic agents.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is an enveloped virus that attacks mainly human lymphocytes, and belongs to a member of the retrovirus family as it converts its viral RNA genome to DNA by reverse transcription and integrates the resulting DNA into the cellular DNA of a host cell. HIV has RNA as its genetic information and reverse transcriptase within the viral core, which are surrounded by viral capsid proteins. This, in turn, surrounded by a protective lipid membrane comprising glycoproteins, gp 120 and gp41, and gp120 is known to play a critical role in recognizing T-cells to invade thereinto.
HIV targets for CD4+ T cells, as CD4 cell membrane protein functions as a cell receptor for HIV-1 virus. The cell entry of HIV depends on gp120 which binds to intracellular CD4 receptor molecules, and HIV infection causes depletion of CD4+ T cells, thereby leading to immunological incompetence, opportunistic infection, dysneuria, neoplasia, and ultimately death.
Rapid increases in HIV-infected persons and AIDS patients have promoted the development of novel therapeutic agents in various countries, e.g., United States, France, Canada, Japan, and others. Until now, several anti-HIV agents, including 2,3-azidothymidine (AZT), dideoxyinosine (ddI), dideoxycytidine (ddC), and others have been approved by FDA in the United States, but they failed to exhibit complete therapeutic effects without severe adverse side effects. Thus, the development of novel medicaments has become the critical issue.
As another therapeutic agent, protease inhibitors of HIV are known. The Protease inhibitors have been developed based on the fact that the HIV replication could be interrupted by the inhibition of its proteases, during the process that precursor proteins, such as gag and gag-pol polyproteins, comprising capsid proteins and various enzymes fused together are formed and are then cleaved into individual functional proteins, proteases, reverse-transcriptases, and integrases by proteases. Examples of protease inhibitors, used as therapeutic agents for ADIS, include saquinavir, ritonavir, indinavir, and the like. However, the agents have side effects such as diabetes, hemolysis, hemorrhage, hyperlipidemia, impaired lipid metabolism, and others, and causes serious problem of the emergence of tolerant cell lines due to the long-term administration.
The present inventors have endeavored to develop a natural product-derived composition having excellent preventive or therapeutic effects on AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), and have achieved the present invention by confirming that a cell line derived from the cambium of Panax ginseng including wild ginseng and ginseng, and a lysate, an extract and a culture thereof have excellent preventive and therapeutic effects on AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).